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Linking intrinsic scales of ecological processes to characteristic scales of biodiversity and functioning patterns

View ORCID ProfileYuval R. Zelnik, View ORCID ProfileMatthieu Barbier, View ORCID ProfileDavid W. Shanafelt, View ORCID ProfileMichel Loreau, View ORCID ProfileRachel M. Germain
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.10.11.463913
Yuval R. Zelnik
1Theoretical and Experimental Ecology Station, CNRS, Moulis, France
2Department of Ecology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden
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  • For correspondence: zelnik@post.bgu.ac.il
Matthieu Barbier
3Plant Health Institute Montpellier, CIRAD, France
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David W. Shanafelt
4Université de Lorraine, Université de Strasbourg, AgroParis Tech, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement (INRAE), Bureau d’Economie Théorique et Appliquée (BETA), Nancy, France
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Michel Loreau
1Theoretical and Experimental Ecology Station, CNRS, Moulis, France
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Rachel M. Germain
5Department of Zoology & the Biodiversity Research Centre, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada
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Abstract

Ecology is a science of scale, which guides our description of both ecological processes and patterns, but we lack a systematic understanding of how process scale and pattern scale are connected. Recent calls for a synthesis between population ecology, community ecology, and ecosystem ecology motivate the integration of phenomena at multiple levels of organization. Furthermore, many studies leave out the scaling of a critical process: species interactions, which may be non-local through mobility or vectors (resources or species) and must be distinguished from dispersal scales. Here, we use simulations to explore the consequences of different process scales (i.e. species interactions, dispersal, and the environment) on emergent patterns of biodiversity, ecosystem functioning, and their relationship, in a spatially-explicit landscape. A major result of our study is that the spatial scales of dispersal and species interactions have opposite effects: a larger dispersal scale homogenizes spatial biomass patterns, while a larger interaction scale amplifies their heterogeneity. We find that an interesting interplay between process scales occurs when the spatial distribution of species is heterogeneous at large scales, i.e., when the environment is not too uniform and dispersal not very strong. Interestingly, the specific scale at which scales of dispersal and interactions begin to influence landscape patterns depends on the environmental heterogeneity of the landscape – in other words, the scale of one process allows important scales to emerge in other processes. Finally, contrary to our expectations, we observe that the spatial scale of ecological processes is more clearly reflected in landscape patterns (i.e. distribution of local outcomes) than in global patterns such as Species-Area Relationships or large-scale biodiversity-functioning relationships.

Competing Interest Statement

The authors have declared no competing interest.

Copyright 
The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license.
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Posted October 12, 2021.
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Linking intrinsic scales of ecological processes to characteristic scales of biodiversity and functioning patterns
Yuval R. Zelnik, Matthieu Barbier, David W. Shanafelt, Michel Loreau, Rachel M. Germain
bioRxiv 2021.10.11.463913; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.10.11.463913
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Linking intrinsic scales of ecological processes to characteristic scales of biodiversity and functioning patterns
Yuval R. Zelnik, Matthieu Barbier, David W. Shanafelt, Michel Loreau, Rachel M. Germain
bioRxiv 2021.10.11.463913; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.10.11.463913

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